Jack Antonoff reflects on his evolving role in music, his fifth Bleachers album, and the state of culture in a wide-ranging interview centered on Everyone for Ten Minutes, due this month. The musician, producer, and songwriter says he does not want to merely participate in culture but to shape it in the direction he believes matters. After rising to mainstream prominence with Fun.’s 2011 hit “We Are Young” and later earning multiple Grammys for his work with artists including Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, and Kendrick Lamar, Antonoff describes his creative approach as deeply personal and guided by instinct rather than trends.
The new Bleachers album takes its title from a moment involving AirDrop’s “Everyone for 10 Minutes” feature, which he interpreted as a metaphor for boundaries, privacy, and the need to decide who is allowed in. He says the record explores love and loss, but from the perspective of what he wants to leave behind. That idea is echoed in “Dirty Wedding Dress,” a song inspired by his wedding to actor Margaret Qualley, where he recalls the contrast between the intimacy of the ceremony and the public attention outside the venue. For Antonoff, the song’s message is about keeping close only the people who truly matter.
A major theme throughout the interview is his skepticism about online community and modern culture. Antonoff argues that real connection is built in physical spaces, not on the internet, and compares his own teenage experience in New Jersey with discovering people who shared his taste in music and values. He says those encounters shaped his sense of identity and his idea of what it means to be an artist. He also returns often to loneliness, describing lonely people as a meaningful and creative group whose experiences can produce some of the most powerful art and wisdom.
The album’s opening tracks, “Sideways” and “The Van,” look back to his life at 15, a period Antonoff sees as pivotal. He says many people came to know him publicly in his late 20s, but that fame can obscure earlier parts of a person’s story. He connects those memories to his family background, including an Eastern European immigrant history shaped by survival, stability, and hard work. Leaving that expected path as a teenager, he says, set him on a more complicated but ultimately defining course.
Antonoff also discusses his work as a producer and collaborator, including his involvement with Kendrick Lamar’s GNX, which he describes as feeling like a “secret society.” He says he becomes intensely focused on understanding the artist he is working with and translating that into music that feels emotionally true. His long-running creative relationship with Lana Del Rey, which began in 2018 and has produced three albums, is presented as an example of collaborations that endure naturally rather than by design.
Looking ahead, Antonoff predicts that pop music will become more organic and more human as algorithmic sounds give way to art that feels direct and immediate. In his view, audiences are increasingly hungry for music that sounds like real people expressing real emotion, not content optimized for attention.
